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Serbia, IMF to conclude talks on new arrangement before April 26

Belgrade, 9 March 2009

Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic voiced his expectation that talks on Serbia’s new arrangement with the IMF will be concluded before April 26, when the spring session of the IMF and the World Bank will be held in Washington.

In an interview for yesterday’s edition of the Press daily, Djelic recalled that the new arrangement implies financial support to Serbia of around $2 billion, announcing that on March 13 a meeting will be held at the government to prepare the platform before the IMF mission arrives in Belgrade on March 16.

He stressed that Serbia has not yet resorted to using the €400 million which it had agreed upon with the IMF in November 2008, as the first country in the region to have done so.

We did not need those funds at that time and we still do not need them. However, bearing in mind the situation from the beginning of the year onwards, it is time for a full arrangement with the IMF, partly because thus we will have more funds to stabilise the dinar, said Djelic.

He noted that the arrangement with the IMF is also a precondition for budget support from the European Commission and the World Bank.

Djelic stressed that the EU and the World Bank rely on the IMF as an institution which assesses the state of a country’s economy and through its arrangement provides a guarantee that the country has a sustainable macro economic programme.

He also noted that Serbia is currently negotiating an additional $150–200 million with the World Bank, as well as that it began talks with the European Commission in macro financial support of around €400 million.